Few Notice The Terror

Few noticed, but Sajjan Kumar was acquitted last week. If you're asking "Sajjan who?", you shouldn't be. Sajjan Kumar, Congress leader from Delhi,
is the kind of Indian we should all remember long and well.

The sole report I found about his acquittal was a minuscule one from PTI.
"The prosecution alleged", it says, that Kumar and his co-accused Ishwar
Singh were "leading a mob armed with iron rods and lathis, which attacked
people belonging to the Sikh community." The police charged the two with
attempt to murder. For they "had allegedly incited a mob for violence in
[the] Sultanpuri area of the capital after the assassination of Indira
Gandhi on October 31, 1984."

The police charged them all right, but the police's efforts seem to have
ended right there. Additional Sessions Judge R C Yaduvanshi, trying the
case, observed that the prosecution failed to produce sufficient evidence
against Kumar and Singh. So he acquitted both.

Which brought to a close yet another feeble attempt to bring justice to the
families of 3,000 Sikhs murdered in 1984. In the wake of what is undoubtedly
the worst single crime, the greatest shame, in our half century, this is
all those families have had by way of justice: the occasional feeble
attempt that meanders into nothing.

Naturally, there have been those favourite ruses of the Indian state in the
wake of riots: inquiries. They have painted clearly the role played in
those riots by Kumar and such other Congress politicians as H K L Bhagat,
Lalit Maken, Jagdish Tytler and Dharam Das Shastri. All were accused of
crimes then, of egging on murderous mobs. But as inquiries do, these have
only gathered years of dust. Home Minister Advani has even proposed yet
another such exercise. (An inquiry, not the dust-gathering, though those
might amount to the same thing).

And there has been the occasional case. Two women who lost their husbands
in that nightmare, Darshan Kaur and Satnami Bai, filed one against H K L
Bhagat. Four years ago, it actually resulted in a warrant for the man's
arrest. He was brought to court. But as politicians do, this one promptly
complained of chest pains caused by his entry into court. The pain
attracted caustic comment from the judge about how convenient illnesses
afflict politicians -- but Bhagat went to hospital anyway. Some months
later, Satnami Bai, who had previously identified Bhagat as the man who led
a mob that attacked her house and burned her husband alive, mysteriously
could not identify him any more. Darshan Kaur was left to hint at why: "I
and my children are still getting threats," she told the court. Yet she had
not been cowed -- yet. The "neta with black goggles," she said to the judge, "told the rioters to kill the people."

That's the last heard of that case, for nearly four years now. And today
Sajjan Kumar has been acquitted in another case. Fifteen years later, these
powerful men with their political connections remain free, as do others
accused of crimes in the 1984 murders. Not just free, but hiding behind the
highest security available, paid for by Indian taxpayers. Including the
families of Indians killed in that 1984 carnage. (Maken, of course, was
shot dead in 1985).

Few noticed, but December 22 saw a case adjourned yet again because the
accused refused to show up. A familiar tale, because it has happened as
many as twenty-four times since October 1997. This case is the CBI's
Special Court of Inquiry into the demolition of the Babri Masjid on
December 6 1992. It was initially set up by the Uttar Pradesh police's
crime branch three days after the demolition, but turned over entirely to
the CBI in August the next year. Leaders such as present Ministers Advani
and M M Joshi, Uma Bharti, Bal Thackeray and others are accused in the case
for their involvement in the demolition. They are charged under a host of
Indian Penal Code sections: ranging from 147 (punishment for rioting) to
153(a) (promoting enmity between communities on the basis of religion) to
295 (destruction of a place of a worship) to 395a (dacoity) and many more.

The inquiry has followed a tortuous, if languorous, route since August
1993. The CBI filed a charge-sheet in October. In August 1994, the Special
Court was allotted a judge. Three days later, the CBI asked to conduct
"further investigations" in the case, even though it had filed its
charge-sheet nearly a year before. In January 1996, "further
investigations" presumably complete, the CBI filed a fresh charge-sheet.
One-and-a-half years later, in September 1997, the Special Court ordered
charges to be framed against the accused. Immediately, the accused filed
petitions challenging this order. Some of those were upheld, staying the
Special Court's order to frame charges.

Since then, the Court has set 24 successive dates to hear the case -- to
hear, let's be quite clear, the objections of the accused to the order
issued to frame charges. On all those dates, the accused have themselves
chosen absence and consequent adjournment.

Now you may see not a thing wrong with such continued defiance of court
proceedings, especially if your particular political predilections lie in
the direction of Advani and his mates. But consider that the demolition was
the climax of a long campaign led most visibly by Home Minister Advani
himself, riding on a Toyota pretending to be a chariot. Consider that
Advani, as home minister, is himself ultimately responsible for the
prosecution of a case in which he himself is an accused.

Consider that something like 2,000 Indians were slaughtered in the riots that demolition triggered; that just as with the 3,000 Indians who were slaughtered in 1984, nobody has been punished for these murders. Consider that there was a five-year-long inquiry into the riots in Bombay after the demolition: an
inquiry whose inconvenient conclusions Advani and his mates have blithely
ignored, just as inquiries inconvenient to Bhagat, Kumar and mates have
been ignored.

And consider, in the light of all that, these few statements about this
inquiry that Home Minister Advani made in a recent interview to Outlook" 'The law will take its own course. ... [But] I am completely innocent. ...
[A]s far as the demolition is concerned ... it was the saddest day of my
life. And *I* am accused of conspiring to pull down the structure! I had
nothing to do with the demolition. ... Chhodo, jayenge jail (I'll go to
jail) if it comes to that. I am innocent.'

The man rode a chariot for months to whip up passions about that mosque,
but he "had nothing to do with the demolition" and "it was the saddest day"
of his life when it happened. He wants the law to "take its own course" and
is quite willing to go to jail "if it comes to that," but has skipped court
appearances 24 successive times over two years and more.

Our home minister. Not acquitted in that demolition case, or not yet. But he might as well be.

Few noticed, but Santosh Kumar Singh was acquitted on December 3, 1999. This
young man was tried for the January 1996 rape and murder of Priyadarshini
Mattoo in New Delhi. He was acquitted, much as Sajjan Kumar was, because of
a series of "lapses" by the prosecution and the CBI as they investigated
the case. The lapses are hardly surprising: Singh happens to be the son of
J P Singh, the inspector-general of police in Pondicherry.

Mattoo was assaulted, raped and strangled to death in her home. She had 19
injuries on her body. For over a year, Santosh Singh had been stalking her,
telephoning her at home and making threats, stopping her car and shouting
at her. She was given personal security by the Delhi police, but that
didn't slow this maniac. A neighbour even noticed him at the entrance to
Mattoo's flat shortly before her murder.

All this was noted by Additional Sessions Judge G P Thareja, trying the
case. But he also noted a wide range of apparently deliberate attempts to
weaken the case against Singh. He faulted the CBI for not following
"official procedure", for hiding evidence from the court, for hiding a
fingerprint report, for fabricating documentary evidence that supported
Singh, and for "fabricating DNA technology." He wondered, in his judgement,
"if the CBI during trial knowingly acted in this manner to favour the
accused." He also wrote that "the Delhi police attempted to assist the
accused during investigation and also during trial. ... [Their doings]
suggest that the rule of law is not meant for those who enforce the law nor
for their near relatives."

Faced with a case apparently subverted from the start, Thareja actually
concluded: "Though I know [Santosh Singh] is the man who committed the
crime, I acquit him, giving him the benefit of the doubt."

Few of us noticed these three events. Many more noticed and were outraged
by the terror in Kandahar. Yet may I submit: the riots that killed 3,000
Indians in 1984 were nothing but terrorism. The riots that the demolition
of a mosque set off in 1992 were nothing but terrorism. A man who stalks,
rapes and murders a woman is nothing but a terrorist.

Mine is a government, a country, unwilling and unable to punish those
responsible for such terror. Mine is a country where a judge observes that
"the rule of law is not meant for those who enforce [it]." Why should I, or
any Indian, or anyone, believe mine is a country that wants to fight terror
as seen in Kandahar?